"This Was My Home"

 

In 1941, Sandusky High School student Eleanor Downing wrote an essay for the Fram entitled “This Was My Home.”

Eleanor wrote that she always loved living in the country, with its blue skies, sunshine, and starry, still nights. She enjoyed the sights and sounds of rural Erie County, Ohio, and war seemed far away from her happy home. In 1941, the United States War Department acquired 9,000 acres of farm land in Perkins Township, to make way for a munitions factory. 150 families had to find homes elsewhere. The Plum Brook Ordnance Works was named for a creek which ran through the land. Later the site was occupied by NASA for nuclear research. The Plum Brook Station is now called the NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at the Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility.

By doing a bit of research on Ancestry Library Edition, Rootsweb, and the Ohio Obituary Index, we were able to determine that Eleanor Downing was a descendant of the House family, who were among the early settlers in Perkins Township from Connecticut. The land was a vital resource to those pioneer residents, who had large farms on which they raised crops and livestock. Eleanor wrote a poignant article about how much she appreciated her home in the country, and how soon the things that she had “loved and looked forward to” would become things of the past. Visit the Sandusky Library to view the original article by Eleanor Downing in the April 1941 copy of the Fram.

Erie County Companies Contributed to the War Effort During World War II

Many of you might know about Erie County's contribution to the production of war munitions during the Second World War. From 1941 to 1945, the Trojan Powder Company manufactured explosives at the Plum Brook Ordnance Works, five miles south of Sandusky in Perkins Township. It is estimated that over a billion pounds of ordnance was manufactured at the complex. The PBOW News, an employee newsletter, was discussed in an earlier blog post.

Several other companies in the Sandusky area also contributed to the war effort during the 1940’s. Charles E. Frohman, a Vice President of the Hinde & Dauch Paper Company, was chairman of the War Savings Program for Erie County in 1941-1942, and was a member of the Sandusky Appeals Panel of the War Manpower Commission in 1944-1945. In December, 1946, Mr. Frohman sent out several letters to Sandusky factories inquiring about their involvement in war production, as requested by the Ohio War History Commission.

Mr. E.C. Trausch, from the advertising department of Apex Electrical Manufacturing Co., answered Mr. Frohman’s request with a three page document that itemized the many products manufactured by Apex’s Sandusky plant between 1942 and 1945. Over $21 million of materials were manufactured by the local Apex plant during World War II.

The Klotz Machine Company manufactured bearings, castings, and grinders during the war.

The Union Chain & Manufacturing Company of Sandusky assisted in the design of the special track necessary for LVT amphibious tractors, and built a variety of sprocket chains and sprockets for several different military applications. Just a portion of the military items built by Union Chain are listed below.

The Barr Rubber Products Company manufactured inflatable life rafts, airplane fuel tanks, rubber fittings for tanks, pilot balloons, and gaskets and rubber coated wheels, which netted over $5 million dollars during wartime. The Hinde & Dauch Company was one of the leading suppliers of packaging for war materials and supplies. Special types of packaging were designed to meet overseas shipping requirements. Packaging had to be created that could withstand the weather of arid deserts, as well as tropical beaches and jungles. The Sandusky factory of the Hinde & Dauch Company produced 132,633,235 square feet of V-board and fabricated 14,368,000 packages, which carried everything from beer to bullets. 

Brown Industries produced heavy duty gasoline and diesel engine manifolds and cylinder heads. Employees of Brown Industries averaged more than 60 hours of work per week during the war years, in order to meet the orders needed for the war effort. Oliver F. Rinderle discussed his company’s war experience in his letter, “The greatest satisfaction experienced by us was in having our customers tell us at the end of the war that none of them had ever failed to maintain promised shipping schedules of their products due to failure on our part in meeting their demands upon us.” 

Several additional letters from Sandusky factories describing contributions to the war effort are available for research in the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.

Roosevelt Birthday Balls Held in Sandusky

From 1934 through 1942, balls in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s birthday were held in Sandusky, Ohio. Sponsored by the National Committee for Birthday Balls, a portion of the proceeds from the dances went to the Warm Springs Foundation for their work for the sufferers of infantile paralysis, a disease that had had seriously impacted President Roosevelt himself. 

In 1934 and 1935, the National Birthday Ball for the President was held at Jackson Junior High School. The gymnasium was decorated to resemble the Georgia Hall at Warm Springs. On the morning of January 31, 1934, assemblies were held in Sandusky schools, to educate the students about the history and work of the Warm Springs Foundation. Each youngster was asked to donate one penny as a contribution to the Foundation.

In 1934, Sandusky residents raised $623 at the Roosevelt Birthday Ball. Nationwide there were 600 celebrations, which raised over one million dollars for the Warm Springs Foundation. Beginning in 1936, and continuing until 1942, most years the Roosevelt Birthday Balls were held at the Elks and Eagles Lodges. In 1942, the Plum Brook Ordnance Works sponsored a Birthday Ball for the President at Rainbow Garden in Fremont.  Irving Berlin composed a song in 1942 in honor of the President’s Birthday. Below is a copy of an announcement for the 1940 President’s Birthday Ball from the January 27, 1940 issue of the Sandusky Register.

Today the March of Dimes Foundation continues to raise funds used to improve the health of women and infants.

Christmas Observance at Sandusky Junior High School in 1944

On December 22, 1944, the employees of Plum Brook Ordnance Works and their families and friends, met at Sandusky’s Junior High School (later known as Jackson Junior High School) for the third annual old-fashioned Christmas observance. All those in attendance received a program which included the words to several traditional Christmas carols.

Brief messages by local ministers, Rev. Theo J.C. Stellhorn, Sr. and Rev. C. J. Dobmeyer, offered reflections on peace while America was at war.

Plum Brook Ordnance Works News Comics

Sandusky’s war effort during World War II far exceeded the typical activities of Red Cross drives, victory gardens, and military recruitments. Just five miles south of the city was the Plum Brook Ordnance Works munitions factory, charged with the responsibility of manufacturing explosives trinitrotoluene (TNT), dinitrotoluene (DNT), and pentolite. The site produced more than one billion pounds of ordnance throughout World War II.

The Trojan Powder Company, the operating contractor of the factory, published a weekly newspaper for its employees. The PBOW News ran between July 1942 and August 1945, keeping readers abreast of the company’s most recent activities, like company softball and bowling stats, war progress, and production details.

But the paper’s pages provide more information than company endeavors. Attempting to keep its employees entertained, PBOW News editors filled out weekly issues with all sorts of cartoons. A look at these toons offers some insight into the attitudes and outlooks of Sandusky factory workers during wartime. The scope of these comics ranged from job safety to social commentary to mindless entertainment, all with an amusing edge. Editors arranged the cartoons alongside grim World War II news, demonstrating that a sense of levity was sometimes a necessary accompaniment to the serious nature of war.

(5/29/43)
(5/1/43)
(8/15/42)
Some of these strips come with messages to the workers. . .

Did people in the 1940s actually find these strips funny? Perhaps not. After all, how many of us split sides over Non Sequitur?

(9/5/42)
Now this one is funny, although probably not intentionally so.

After the war’s end, the facility sat idle. The U.S. Army decontaminated and decommissioned the buildings and structures associated with manufacturing the explosives. With the close of the munitions factory came an end to the company newspaper. Those interested the history of the facility can visit the Sandusky Library Archives and browse through the records. Past issues of the PBOW News comprise the bulk of the Library’s Plum Brook Ordnance Works Collection.